Election of the
legislature

The Greek Parliament (Vouli ton
Ellinon) has 300 members, elected for a four-year term by a
system of reinforced proportional representation
in 56 constituencies,
48 of which are multi-seat and 8 single-seat, and a single
nationwide list. 288 of the 300 seats are determined by
constituency voting, and voters may select the candidate or
candidates of their choice by marking their name on the party
ballot. The remaining 12 seats are filled from nationwide party
lists on a top-down basis and based on the proportion of the total
vote each party received.

Greek citizens aged 25 and over on the date of the election (and
eligible to vote) are also eligible to be elected to
Parliament.

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Constituencies

Constituencies
in Greece have traditionally been multi-seat, and they mostly
coincide with prefectures. The number of seats is adjusted once
every ten years, following the decennial population census.
Prefecture constituencies may not be deprived of representation,
nor may they be merged with another prefecture; they may however be
split into smaller constituencies if their population increases
disproportionately: nevertheless this has not been done since 1967.
Population changes have left eight (Kefalonia, Lefkas, Eurytania, Grevena, Samos, Thesprotia, Phocis and Zakynthos) prefectures with a single
parliamentary seat each, whereas some urban or suburban
constituencies have seen large increases in their seat allotment
over the years.

For example the "Athens B" constituency (which includes the
major part of the Athens
metropolitan area but excludes the Municipality of Athens itself, which forms the
"Athens A" constituency) encompasses almost 15% of the country's
electorate and consequently elects 42 members of parliament. The
"Athens A" constituency elects 17 MPs, "Thessaloniki A" elects 16, Attica (excluding the four Athens
and Piraeus A and B constituencies) elects 12, and the remaining
constituencies elect single-digit numbers of MPs.

Voting

Polling takes place in school buildings on a Sunday, a festive
occasion for students who are then given a four-day weekend off.
The procedure is run by a presiding judge or attorney-at-law
appointed by the local Bar association, and secretarially
assisted by local citizens selected by lot in a process resembling
jury duty. Local police
are available too. Local party representatives are allowed to
monitor tallying; their theoretical role is to ensure transparency
but in practice they are delegated the roles of ordering food for
the exhausted crew.

Traditionally, voting takes place "from sunrise to sunset" but
times are usually rounded to the nearest "top of the hour" (e.g. 7
AM to 8 PM). Individual precincts may prolong voting time at the
judge's discretion, if there are still voters queueing up to vote.
Voters identify themselves by their ID cards and are given the
full number of ballot papers for the constituency plus a blank
ballot paper and an empty envelope. Then they withdraw to a
secluded cubicle equipped with a lectern, pen and waste basket,
where they select the ballot paper of their choice, if any, and
mark the candidate(s) of their choice, if any; they cast the sealed
envelope with the ballot paper in the ballot box and are given
their ID card back.

Voters may select specific candidates within the party list of
their choice by marking a cross next to the candidate name or
names. The maximum allowable number of crosses on the ballot paper
depends on the number of seats contested. Signs other than crosses
next to a candidate name may mark the ballot as invalid during
tallying, as such findings may be construed to violate voting
secrecy. Ballot papers with more crosses that the maximum number
allowed, or without any cross, are counted in the total party tally
but are disqualified during the second part of tallying,
i.e. the determination of which individual candidate is
elected to a seat already won by the candidate's party.

Once on-the-spot tallying is over and the tallies reported
officially, the ballots are sealed and transported to the Central
Election Service of the Interior Ministry. There ballots are
recounted, mainly in order to ascertain the validity or invalidity
of the few ambiguously marked ballot papers. Any unresolved matters
following this recount are referred to the specially convened
Eklogodikeion (Court of Election), which adjudicates and
then officially publishes the names of elected MPs, so that the new
Parliament may convene. The Court of Election may reconvene at any
time in order to discuss appeals by candidates who failed to be
elected, and also to fill seats that become vacant in the case of
death or abdication of an MP. Such seats are filled by going down
the preference tally of the party list that won the seat in the
first place (there are no by-elections in Greece).

A peculiarity of the Greek Parliament is the suffrage given to
Greek citizens permanently living abroad (about 7 million
people).

Electoral
law

Under the current electoral law of "reinforced proportionality",
any single party must receive at least a 3% nationwide vote tally
in order to elect Members of Parliament (the so-called "3%
threshold"). The law in its current form favors the first past the post party to achieve an
absolute (151 out of 300 parliamentary seats) majority, provided it
tallies about 41.5% of the total vote. This is touted to enhance
governmental stability. The previous law (applied in the 2004
legislative elections) was even more favorable for the first party.
The current electoral law reserves 40 parliamentary seats for the
"first past the post" party or coalition of parties, and apportions
the remaining 260 seats proportionally according to each party's
total valid vote percentage. This is slightly higher than
the raw percentage reported, as there is always a small number of
invalidated or "blank" votes (usually less than 1%), as well as the
percentage of smaller parties that fail to surpass the 3%
threshold, all of which are disregarded for the purpose of seat
allotment.

A rather complicated set of rules deals with rounding decimal
results up or down, and ensures that the smaller a constituency is,
the more strictly proportional its parliamentary representation
will be. Another set of rules apportions the 40 seat premium for
the largest-tallying party among constituencies. Individual seats
are apportioned by "cross of preference". Voters mark a
cross next to the name of the candidate or candidates they prefer,
the number of crosses varying from one to five depending on
constituency size. Ballots with no crosses or more crosses than
allowed, count for only the party but not the individual
candidates. Tallying is done manually in the presence of
representatives of all contesting parties. Party tallying, which is
easier, is done first so that returns may be announced quickly.
Individual candidate tallying is done next and can take several
days. Once the number of seats per party and constituency is
determined, the seats are filled on a top-down basis from the
individual cross-of-preference tallies. Party heads and acting or
past Prime Ministers are exempt from cross-of-preference voting:
they are automatically placed at the top of their party list and
are elected, provided their party achieves at least one seat in the
particular constituency.

By constitutional provision, the electoral law can be changed by
simple parliamentary majority, but a law so changed becomes
enforced only in the election following the upcoming one, unless a
2/3 parliamentary supermajority (200 or more votes) is achieved.
Only in the latter case is the new electoral law effective
immediately. A case in point is the current electoral law, which is
roughly similar to the previous one, except it allocates a premium
of 50 seats, instead of 40, to the first-past-the-post
party. Since this law was passed by simple majority, it will not be
used for the upcoming election, but for the one after that.

Greek
electoral laws since 1974

Law's "trademark"

Passed in

Passed by

Applied in (election year)

Approximate nationwide vote percentage needed for an
absolute majority of seats in Parliament for the
first-past-the-post party

According to the Constitution, it will not be in force during
the next elections

39%+

3%

Electorate

All Greek citizens who are 18 or over on the date of the
election are eligible to vote, provided they are on the electoral register, unless:

they are imprisoned for a criminal offence
and they have been expressly deprived of
the right to vote by judicial decision (this happens only in the
rare cases of high
treason or mutiny).
Incarcerated persons vote in polling stations specially set up
inside prisons

they are mentally incapable of making a reasoned judgement,
according to a judicial decision. In practice, this applies only to
a percentage of institutionalised mental patients

In the past, citizens who reached adulthood had to register and
were issued an "election booklet" with which they voted. Nowadays,
registration for voters is not needed: it is done automatically as
each citizen comes of age. Proof of identity is done by
state-issued ID cards or passport. Special registration is
necessary only for absentee voting, which is done at the place of a
voter's temporary residence on election day. Many Greeks choose to
retain their voting rights in their family's original home,
sometimes by reason of tradition, sometimes by reason of patronage.
The Constitution provides, following
the amendment of 2001, for the
right of Greek citizens living abroad to vote for the legislative
elections. Nevertheless, no law implementing the constitutional
provision has yet been passed.

Compulsory voting is the law in
Greece however it is not enforced. In the past, a citizen had to
present an up-to-date election booklet in order to be issued a
driver's license or a passport, or else justify why they did not
vote (eg because of absence, infirmity, or advanced old age).
Nowadays the civic duty of voting is still considered "mandatory",
but there are no sanctions for failing to vote. Turnout is usually
high, typically between 70 and 80% for legislative elections and
slightly lower for local administrative and European Parliament
ones.

Party
system

Before 1910, Greece lacked a coherent party system in accordance with the traits
of the modern representative democracy. The
political formations of the 19th century lacked a steady
organizational structure and a clear ideological orientation.
Sometimes, they constituted just the incoherent and ephemeral
escort of a prominent politician.

The first Greek parties with an ideological background,
conforming to the modern conception of a political party, appeared after 1910,
when Eleftherios Venizelos rose to
predominance in Greek political life and founded his
Liberal Party. The liberal wave of Venizelism resulted soon
in the reaction of the "old-system" political leaders, who formed
the core of an opposing conservative movement, which used the
monarchy as its main rallying banner. Thereby, the two biggest
ideological movements, the republican centrist-liberal and the
monarchist conservative, emerged and formed massive political
organizations. The centrist and the conservative parties bitterly
confronted each other in the ensuing legislative elections for many
decades, until metapolitefsi. After the metapolitefsi
of 1974, the leftist-socialist movement supplanted the centrists
and took the main part of their electorate. A smaller part of
erstwhile centrists, along with most conservatives, affiliated
themselves with the centre-right New Democracy party, which
self-defined as a liberal party and drafted the republicanConstitution of 1975.

When a presidential term expires, Parliament votes to elect the
new President. In the first two votes, a 2/3 majority (200 votes)
is necessary. The third and final vote requires a 3/5 (180 votes)
majority. If the third vote is fruitless, Parliament is dissolved
and elections are proclaimed by the outgoing President within the
next 30 days. In the new Parliament, the election for President is
repeated immediately with a 3/5 majority required for the initial
vote, an absolute majority (151 votes) for the second one and a
simple majority for the third and final one. The system is so
designed as to promote consensus Presidential candidates among the
main political parties.

Local
elections

Local elections elect super-prefects, prefects, and mayors for
the country's 3 super-prefectures, 54 prefectures, 900 municipalities and approximately 135 communities, as well as the councillors to
serve on the super-prefectural, prefectural, municipal and
community councils.

According to the current voting system, the poll-leading
candidate (and her or his list) polling more than 42 percent of the
vote in the first round of voting is elected to the public office
they were contesting, i.e. super-prefect, prefect, mayor
(in a municipality) or president (in a community). If no candidate
attains this percentage, a second round of voting takes place
between the two poll-topping candidates from the first round. In
elections at the community level there is no second round,
i.e. the election is won by the first past the post list.
The 42 percent threshold was introduced in a legal reform of 2006.
Previously, the threshold stood at 50 percent in the first
round.

The first prefectural elections took place in 1994 (Law
2218/1994). Previously, prefects were executive appointees. In both
municipal and prefectural elections, the winning candidacy list is
guaranteed a minimum three-fifths majority in the respective
councils.

Prefectural and municipal elections are held every four years,
traditionally in October. The last local elections took
place on October 15, 2006.

Plebiscites

All the plebiscites conducted in Greece from 1920 to 1974 have had to do with the
form of
government, namely retention/reestablishment or abolition of
the monarchy.
The last plebiscite of 1974 is deemed final and conclusive with
regards to the matter of the head of the Greek state and the choice
of the constitutional model of the parliamentary republic, because
of the overwhelming majority favoring abolition of the monarchy and
the free and fair manner in which the plebiscite was conducted: